Facilitating retail customers’ use of AI-based virtual assistants: A meta-analysis

IF 8 1区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS

Journal of Retailing Pub Date : 2024-06-01 DOI:10.1016/j.jretai.2024.04.001

Markus Blut , Nancy V. Wünderlich , Christian Brock

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Retailers rely on virtual assistants (VAs), such as Amazon's Alexa and chatbots, to deliver 24/7 customer service at low costs, as well as novel shopping opportunities. Despite improved VA capabilities due to artificial intelligence (AI), many retailers still struggle to convince customers to become repeat users of VAs. Therefore, to establish recommendations for how to facilitate VA use, this meta-analysis extracts 2,766 correlations from 244 independent samples of customers interacting with VAs. The results suggest that customer-, VA-, and shopping occasion–related factors all influence technology use. Price value is the strongest driver, followed by support, social influence, and anthropomorphism. Performance risk, competence, and trust matter to lesser extents. These factors exert strong indirect effects by triggering two customer responses: cognitive and emotional. Negative emotions emerge as a particularly important mediator. Finally, several VA types enhance or weaken the noted effects, including whether they are intelligent/less intelligent, commercial/noncommercial, voice-/text-based, and avatar-/non-avatar-based. The results suggest no one-size-fits-all approach applies for VAs, because their performance varies across customer responses. The current meta-analysis provides in-depth guidance for retailers seeking to select appealing VAs.

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促进零售客户使用人工智能虚拟助手：荟萃分析

零售商依靠亚马逊的 Alexa 和聊天机器人等虚拟助理（VA）以低成本提供全天候客户服务，并提供新颖的购物机会。尽管人工智能（AI）提高了虚拟助理的能力，但许多零售商仍难以说服顾客成为虚拟助理的回头客。因此，为了就如何促进虚拟顾客服务的使用提出建议，本荟萃分析从 244 个与虚拟顾客服务互动的独立样本中提取了 2766 项相关性。结果表明，与顾客、增值服务和购物场合相关的因素都会影响技术的使用。价格价值是最大的驱动因素，其次是支持、社会影响和拟人化。性能风险、能力和信任的影响程度较小。这些因素通过引发两种顾客反应：认知反应和情绪反应，产生了强烈的间接影响。负面情绪是一个特别重要的中介因素。最后，几种虚拟机构类型增强或削弱了上述效应，包括智能/非智能型、商业/非商业型、语音/文本型和头像/非头像型。分析结果表明，没有一种放之四海而皆准的方法适用于虚拟形象，因为它们在不同客户反应中的表现各不相同。当前的荟萃分析为零售商选择有吸引力的虚拟形象提供了深入指导。

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来源期刊

Journal of Retailing BUSINESS-

CiteScore

15.90

自引率

6.00%

发文量

审稿时长

67 days

期刊介绍： The focus of The Journal of Retailing is to advance knowledge and its practical application in the field of retailing. This includes various aspects such as retail management, evolution, and current theories. The journal covers both products and services in retail, supply chains and distribution channels that serve retailers, relationships between retailers and supply chain members, and direct marketing as well as emerging electronic markets for households. Articles published in the journal may take an economic or behavioral approach, but all are based on rigorous analysis and a deep understanding of relevant theories and existing literature. Empirical research follows the scientific method, employing modern sampling procedures and statistical analysis.